Rebirth of England.

Chapter 651 United Bank for Africa
New Year’s Day 2009 just passed, January 1, Friday.

Barclays Bank announced that it will cut branches and sell its African branch in response to profit losses. Robert Diamond, president of Barclays Bank, said that in the next stage, their focus will return to the British and American markets.

The reason for making this decision is that in addition to the impact of the subprime mortgage crisis, Barclays Bank needs to increase cash flow, and the depreciation of the South African currency has resulted in unsatisfactory performance of Barclays Bank's African business in the past two years.

Barclays Bank's African business is mainly Barclays Africa Group. In 2005, Barclays Bank acquired a 45% stake in Amalgamated Banks of South Africa (ABSA) for US$56.4 billion, and later increased its stake to 62.3% and changed its name to Barclays Africa Group.

Barclays Africa Group is headquartered in Johannesburg, the capital of South Africa. It is a listed company on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and the fourth largest bank in South Africa, after Standard Bank of South Africa, FirstRand Bank of South Africa and Nedbank of South Africa. It has 45000 employees and 1267 branches in 12 countries, including Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, Ghana and Uganda.

Finally, United Bank of West Africa reached an agreement with Barclays Bank to acquire Barclays Bank's 35% stake in Barclays Africa Group for US$62.3 billion.

In addition, West African United Bank will acquire 10% of Barclays Africa Group's shares from another shareholder of Barclays Africa Group, South Africa's United Banking Group, for US$17.7 billion.

Following the completion of this acquisition, United Bank of West Africa will hold an 80% stake in Barclays Africa Group.

The funds required for this acquisition will be contributed by West Africa Group and Kolo National Development Investment Company, shareholders of the West African United Bank, with their shareholding ratio of 8:2.

Afterwards, the United Bank of West Africa will merge its business with Barclays Africa Group to form the United Bank for Africa (UBA).

After the merger, West Africa Group and Kolo National Development Investment Corporation will hold a total of 78.77% of the shares of United Bank for Africa.

In addition, the United Bank for Africa will have branches in more than 15 countries across Africa, thus becoming an international bank in Africa.

In addition, the United Bank for Africa will be listed on the Brittany Stock Exchange this year, becoming a dual-listed company on the Brittany Stock Exchange and the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.

“United Bank of West Africa is the first bank in Africa to cooperate with payment software such as Paypal and Klarna Pay. We have been committed to using technology to improve people’s lives. Next, we will serve more international Africans…”

Hector Pate, president of the United Bank for Africa, said in an interview:
"After the merger, we will serve more African companies, help them with financing and development, and boost Africa's economic take-off."

Prior to the acquisition of Barclays Africa Group, the United Bank of West Africa had already established branches in Ghana, Benin, Burkina Faso and Côte d'Ivoire around Kolo, and the merged United Bank of Africa will continue to expand its business throughout Africa.

And support more high-quality companies to go public and raise funds on the Bursa Securities Exchange.

It is worth mentioning that during this economic crisis, the currencies of most African countries, including the West African franc, have depreciated significantly, but because of sufficient foreign exchange and gold reserves, the exchange rate of the Kolo shilling has remained relatively strong - a slight depreciation is also to maintain the export of domestically produced goods in Kolo.

Coupled with the Kolo's increasingly open monetary policy, the Kolo shilling has become a "hard currency" that residents of many neighboring countries are willing to hold.

This has also made the LOMX more attractive to some companies for financing, and the number of foreign investors who have opened accounts and invested in the LOMX has also been increasing. In order to serve overseas investors, the LOMX has set up branches in the capitals of some neighboring countries to provide local investors with services including account opening and redemption. Even with the technical support of the LOMX Group, users can complete transactions directly through the Internet after opening an account.

There are currently more than 50 companies listed on the Bursa Malaysia Stock Exchange.

……

"Our negotiations with American International Group have come to fruition. They will sell AIA to us for US$220 billion..."

In a luxurious apartment in the financial city, after Barron visited Wang Wanting and their child Eden who lived there, she also talked to Barron about the acquisition of AIA.

Now, Wang Wanting still needs to accompany her children frequently, so she will not return to Barron as his personal assistant - Zhang Junning is doing a good job in this job now.

Wang Wanting began to be responsible for the affairs of the Cavendish Trust Fund.

This is also the reason why she discussed with Barron the acquisition of AIA by the Friendship Insurance Group, which now belongs to the Cavendish Trust Fund.

As for the funds for the acquisition of AIA, the Cavendish Trust will provide US$170 billion (US$100 billion of which is borrowed from Barclays Bank and Standard Chartered Bank, using shares of other companies held by the Cavendish Trust as collateral) and China Asset Management's Tianhe Capital will invest US$50 billion to carry out the acquisition.

After the acquisition is completed, AIA will be merged into AIA Group, with Cavendish Trust holding 80% of the shares of the insurance group and Tianhe Capital holding 20% ​​of the shares.

Huaxia is the largest single market for AIA Group, and Tianhe Capital’s holding will be beneficial to AIA Group’s future business in China.

As for the bank loan, it is actually not difficult for Barron to repay it.

After all, insurance companies mainly make money by collecting premiums for investment and then paying claims to users...

For example, many life insurance policies have the meaning of "regular savings", and together with those related pension insurances, their deposited funds are actually very large.

The extra income earned through investment can quickly repay the loans from these banks.

The subprime mortgage crisis has developed to the current stage. Both the stock market and other securities have almost reached their lows. It can be said that if you buy at the bottom now, any purchase will bring you huge profits through cyclical increases within a few years.

Of course, because both Aocheng Insurance Group and AIA have already suffered losses in their previous investments, they will need to increase the promotion efforts of their insurance agents and use more "attractive" insurance forms to attract some new funds.

(End of this chapter)